Where Worlds Collide

Slykin has an gaming question:

What if you could assemble an ideal collection of folk past of present to participate in your next role-playing experience? Who would be there? Figures from history, celebs, literary geniuses – your imagination sets the limits.

What about this lot?

• Sean Connery as the Real Man
• Robert De Niro as the Real Roleplayer
• Spike Milligan as the Loony
• George W Bush as the Munchkin

Who would want to GM that lot? It would have to be someone that can be trusted to hose the Munchkin!

For historical figures only, how about this lineup for a classic D&D party?

• Julius Caesar as the Fighter
• John Dee as the Mage
• Martin Luther as the Cleric
• Ronnie Biggs as the Thief

The British media hasn’t made much of the ugly ‘deal’ between George Bush and the US Congress, which legitimises torture in all but name, and defines ‘Enemy Combatant’ so dangerously broadly that it could include just about anyone that George Bush doesn’t like.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden has collected a lot of blogosphere responses, culminating with this quote from Jim Henley

It is now official United States policy that our security depends on hiding people away and torturing them, said decision to be made in secret without review. This is what the United States says about who we are.

Dave Neiwert, who the usual suspects amongst the Freepi dismiss as a tinfoil-hat conspiracy theorist, is not the only person to use the F-word.

Fascists are particularly fond of torture because it represents such a complete expression of the fascist will to power. So when a nation adopts torture as an officially condoned policy — as the United States has just done — it immediately raises the specter that, indeed, it may be descending into the fascist abyss.

Neiwert goes on to look at Robert O. Paxton’s nine “mobilizing passions” of fascism, and compare them with what’s happening with the American right. The conclusions he comes to are disturbing.

The appearance of legal torture as part of the American landscape is a profound change, and certainly signals the approach of the totalitarian state, though it may not herald its actual arrival. And considering that a right-wing regime is involved, discussing the specter of fascism is not only appropriate but necessary.

Even if it does not signal the actual arrival of fascism, it’s the clearest warning sign of its approach yet. Torture is a quintessentially fascist act; codifying it means that the massive brick in the wall that it represents has been plunked into place. And it’s the kind of brick that can be the cornerstone of a massive national pathology of apocalyptic proportions.

The terrible truth is that those of us who consider outselves ‘liberal’ are fighting a war on two fronts. The Jihadi are a genuine threat; there really are nihilist fanatics out there trying to kill us. Anyone who thinks that the July 7 London bombings were some kind of false flag operation is off in tinfoil hat land. But the authoritatian elements within our own ruling elites represent just as big a threat to freedom and democracy. They’re using the fear of Islamist terror as a pretext for a power grab of their own.

And don’t think it just applies to America. Some of the recent utterances by John Reid are little different from the words use by Republican senators supporting the torture bill.

As commenter “Midwesterner” said on Samizdata.net

If a 21st century superpower can’t defend itself from 7th century jihadists without sinking to their level, (or even sinking appreciably) we are doomed and might as well fold our hand now.

The conduct of terrorists and torturers does not make it acceptable conduct for us.

Yesterday was also the Manchester Model Railway Club’s 70th exhibition.

Previous Manchester shows have suffered from too many kettle-era branch line termini, which I find get boring no matter how exquisitely modelled. But this year there were a lot of diesel and electric layouts. Star of the show was the club’s own “Dewsbury Midland” running in 70s mode. Although kettle fans would call it a modern layout, it represents the world of a quarter of a century ago, with vacuum braked freights and steam-heated blue and grey Mk1 coaches, all hauled by long-vanished classes of locomotives. Another standout was “Farkham”, a well-detailed slice of 80s urban modelling complete with half-sunken shopping trolleys in the polluted river. Other fine D&E layouts layouts were two 4mm finescale layouts, “Staverton” representing the post-privatisation era, and Saffron Street set back in 60s green era, and a couple of 7mm “plank” layouts, Ian Futers terminus on a pier “Loch Lochy”, and the minimum space shunting layout “The Field”. My only real criticism of the show was the lack of N, represented by a single layout, the small but excellent “Woodhead”

Woodhead (taken at an earlier show)

Despite the lack of N gauge traders, my wallet still took a battering from half-a-dozen of the new Bachmann 16 ton minerals, and some of Ten Commandments stonecast ballast loads to fit the Dapol Dogfish (I bought his entire stock; I’ll need some more at the next show I see him)

Update: I left my camera at home yesterday, but Andy Y took a lot of photos.

Having sold out the smaller Academy 2 twice last year, Porcupine Tree moved up to the larger Academy 1. They didn’t manage to sell out, but still attracted a bigger audience than would have fitted into the smaller venue.

This was a rather different gig to those last two, in that PT started by playing an entire hour of completely new material. Evidently they’ve decided to road-test the songs for the next album in a live setting before going into the studio to record them.

So what did the new material sound like? Well, it looks as though there’s another change in musical direction. It’s not Deadwing part II. If anything, it’s a bit more ‘prog’, less guitar-driven with a lot more keyboards. Wilson himself played quite a bit of keys, leaving John Wesley to play the lead guitar parts. (Wes sang lead vocals in places too!) It was quite a way into the set before we heard Steve play a guitar solo himself. A couple of heavier moments reminded me of parts of Dream Theater circa “Awake“; there was also one song with a soaring vocal line remiscent of Steve Wilson’s side project Blackfield. Steve Wilson thanked us for patiently listening to so much unfamiliar music before the short interval.

The audience energy level picked up during the second half of the show when the band played songs people already knew. The second set was drawn entirely from the two most recent albums, “In Absentia” and “Deadwing“, which might have disappointed those wanting to hear anything from “Lightbulb Sun” or the recently re-released “Stupid Dream“. The kaleidoscopic epic “Arriving Somewhere” was greeted with the most applause, only a year old and already an audience favourite. High spots for me were “Sound of Muzak” and the final encore “Blackest Eyes” with that massive Zeppelinesque intro.

Despite a few quibbles over the setlist in the second half, this was still a very enjoyable show. Hearing so much unfamiliar music in a show often challenging for an audience, especially for a band who’s work tends to need multiple listenings to be fully appreciated. On first hearing, though, these new songs came over as very strong, and I look forward to hearing the album when it comes out next year.

Update: The Ministry of Information has another review.

In a post which is mostly about podcasts and gaming conventions, Carl Cravens says:

I’d talk about indie/”story” games tangentially, but I’m not heavily into them… I steal bits and pieces that are helpful to me, but I’m not looking for a “narrative” experience… I don’t want to tell a story, I want to experience a story. Most story-games don’t work for me because the mechanics are about who has narrative rights… who gets to tell the story, and the mechanics may not even be tied to what’s going on in the story at all.

This reminds me of the post by Joshua BishopRoby that I bookmarked ages ago but never got round to blogging about. It looks at the more extreme narrativist approach to gaming, where little or nothing is defined at the start, and just about everything, including fundamental elements of the setting itself, is made up on the fly during play.

Characters are incorporated in the setting and situation quickly, powerfully, and often inextricably. Actions and stunts become grand to the point of excessive. Stunning reversals and byzantine plots are commonplace. Which isn’t better, I want to state very emphatically and very up front. It’s very, very easy for this kind of set up to create a torrent of too much, too fast that tears through stuff that may be better approached with a more measured, sedate, and nuanced approach. To dodge away from LotR for a moment, this approach does not create Star Trek and Stargate; it makes Battlestar Galactica and Dr. Who.

In extreme circumstances, it makes me wonder if you really are creating a story, or just the outline of one, as emphasised by Joshua’s later anecdote.

Recently, Merten at story-games started a thread asking for clarification because he simply didn’t understand why Tony Lower-Basch wants to distill a complete storyline down to one hour of high-impact play. “What’s your hurry?” he asked, “Why can’t you savor the experience?” In responding to him, I realized that, to a large extent, I didn’t understand why he didn’t want these powerful tools to rock the story over the cliff screaming the whole way down. In the course of discussion, I think I understood a little better that he wanted to be there and experience events directly, and I hope he came to the point where he could see how some people weren’t so interested in being there as implying things about being there.

I’ve played and enjoyed Primetime Adventures a couple of times, which I think is a good example of the sort of game Carl is talking about. But I consider that sort of game is so far removed from a traditional style of RPG that it falls into a quite different genre of game entirely. They give such a different play experience that I don’t believe either can be seen as a substitute for the other.

So where does this leave the games I’m running? Interestingly I’m using two different approaches on my online games with a lot of the same players Kalyr has a richly detailed setting, with a lot of fundamental elements nailed down. I’ve defined the political and social structures, what technology is available, what psionic powers can and can’t do, etc. I’ve also got a whole load of NPCs with pre-defined agendas. The other game, Arrhan Empire Frontiers is much more freewheeling. This is partly because I’ve taken over the game from another GM, and don’t have the same feel of ownership over the setting. So I’ll quite happily make up major plot elements on the fly, or let the players introduce significant bits of setting.